1. Field of the Invention:
This invention relates generally to T-shirts or other textile products such as are often manufactured to include various decorative art applied thereupon. More specifically this invention incorporates holographic art which is a form of picture making that uses no camera, yet is capable of producing a three-dimentional image to be developed and printed on metalized polyester film through harnessing light from a laser. Holographic art emits the brilliant color spectrum, depending upon light intensity and movement, and when interfacing it with silk screen printing or other art, a graphic is enhanced, an effective focal point established, and a human involvement device, which draws people to the product, is created.
2. Prior Art:
The art of holography, a relatively new concept, is currently at the forefront of innovative ideas in advertising, packaging, publishing, direct marketing, and anticounterfeiting applications. Holograms or holographs are a logical theft and fraud detergent because they cannot be removed or reproduced without being destroyed. The tiny dove that appears on Visa charge cards and the globes on MasterCard credit cards, lasered from sculpted models, which were destroyed immediately upon completion of their use of holographic imaging purposes, illustrate this concept.
In pictoral graphics holographic imagery has been used alone, such as on postal and greeting cards, labels and their application to stationery and Tonka toys, display advertising, packaging for IBM software and cereal, and as die-cut letters or other small pieces designed to become portions of a larger entire graphic, such as a bumper on an old car, a kite on a string, a sail on a boat, the eyes for a black cat, sunglasses on a weirdo, and endless other applications.
To date, holograms have been applied to a product by either the hot stamping or pressure sensitive method on paper and cardboard, plastic, and metal products. However, thus far, the necessary ingredients to permanently bond metalized polyester film (upon which holograms are developed) to textiles with reasonable resistance to ordinary wear, tear, and use, such as washing and drying, are not known.
T-shirts, on the other hand, have been an old favorite from long ago. One reason for their perennial popularity, in addition to their comfort in wear, is the fascination of the variety of designs, slogans, names and the like that are imprinted thereupon for being displayed by a wearer. Accordingly, T-shirt manufacturers continue to offer new designs for the ever receptive market. Heretofore most such designs have been placed on the T-shirt either by a silk screen printing process or by hot stamping of prints thereupon. These methods have limited T-shirt decorating to monotonously static graphic art that has continued without change for many years, so it is believed that by now the vastly grown T-shirt market is ready for some additional innovation.